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At The Age For Love

A novel of Bangalore during World War II

by Reginald Shires

"At the Age for Love: A novel of Bangalore during World War II", is an extraordinary story of a soldier's family waiting for his safe return from the Africa Front where he serves with a British tank unit pressing hard against the Germans in the desert of Libya. The chronicle begins with the soldier, Capt. Edward Thompson, saying goodbye to his wife Amelia and son Paddy and ends with his return at the end of the war.

The story, narrated in incredible detail, tells how the boy and his mother with their relatives and friends live in this hectic military city in South India, where those who stay behind are swept along into the rushing, wild stream of British history in India during a time of war. The lives of these women - and their children - provide a bold story of Anglo-India in this multihued Indian landscape where rogues and villains and the honest, hard-working, church-going, form relationships in this bold saga as men and women cross family and racial boundaries in their search for love.

The city of Bangalore with its cluster of towns around British army barracks comes alive with memorable characters and this novel follows their tense and gripping relationships. The ending, where these fun-loving characters come together in a frail boat on the peaceful Cauvery River at Seringapatnam near sunset, has much to say about life and the human mystery and the vision it offers us as we live in a changing world.

REGINALD N. SHIRES, a clergyman, was educated first at Clarence High School in Bangalore, the city of his birth, where he came under the influence of its principal William Wilcox and headmasters Arthur Flack and Mr. Wilson.

He completed his college studies in theology and English at Spicer College, in Kirkee near Poona, where he freelanced for newspapers as a student. He went on to complete his M.A. in Journalism at Pennsylvania State University in the U.S.A. He also received his M.A. in theology at Michigan’s Andrews University. He served as church pastor to small and large congregations in India, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. He is also a college teacher of journalism and speech.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Times of India, Amrita Bazar Patrika and other magazines and journals. His fiction appears in "Voices on the Verandah". He is the author of "At the Age for Love", a novel of Bangalore during World War II.

He is married to Norma D'Sena, a nurse from the railway families of D'Sena and Hodges of Ajmer in Rajasthan. They have a daughter Juanita and three sons: Michael, Donn and Robert. He and his wife live outside the Washington D.C. metro area.